| Positively,
Reality TV |
| Reality TV has been completely over-blown in the past few
years. It's gotten so bad, now we are presented with "The
Singing Bee," in which regular people are expected to … ugh
… sing, and "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" |
| But there is one redeeming reality TV show out there. My
wife has kind of gotten me hooked on it. But it's not about
children running wild through a western town in some strange
Montessori experiment gone commercial. It's not about who's
better at recalling random bits of trivia. |
| It's "The Biggest Loser," and it's redeeming because it
really does encourage people to lose weight. It's a reality
TV show, of course, so there is the usual silly drama about
one person not liking another person. It's got that "Survivor"-like
technique of pitting two teams together, and then pitting
the members of each team against each other. |
| But along the way, it shows people for whom obesity has
become a significant barrier to having a good quality of life
as they work hard to not only lose weight, but become healthy.
|
| The participants work with trainers to control their diet
and develop athletic habits that tear off pounds each week.
And when a contestant is kicked off the show at the end of
the week (I said there was drama, didn't I?) the show jumps
ahead to show how being a participant in the show ended up
helping the person in the long run. |
| Even those contestants who don't make it very far in the
show end up using their knowledge and the empowering experience
to accomplish what they have wanted for so long: to lose weight
and be healthy. |
| In a time when there are 500 channels and nothing to watch,
having a show with a positive message is entertainment in
itself. |
